I like the way that article reads... very little, if any harm to adult bees and no queen loss. I would try OA and the article says we are coming into the right time of year... with little capped brood. About 6 weeks ago I did the "Powdered Sugar" thing. I know it's just a treatment and how it's supposed to work... I am not satisfied with the results. I did it to a hive consisting only of one deep. I sugared 'em on a Wed. and each Wed. for the next two weeks making 3 apps total. Mite count before was 15 on the sticky board for 3 days... meaning 5/day. I counted 30+ after each of the sugar dustings. Waited 3 weeks and did another sticky board... checked it in two days and counted 50 mites... almost 4 times more than when I first checked... go figure. One reason is the total number of bees seemed to double during that time as well... more bees, more mites. From this I can only conclude that powdered sugar is a waste of time.

A word of caution to those who would use OA in early winter in a bloodless period. Yes it should work well to control the mite population, BUT remember, you need to have healthy bees to get the colony through winter. This means you have to have the mite population down enough by July/August for the colony to be able to raise healthy bees for winter. Unless you virtually wiped out all mites the previous winter, you will have to many mites by late summer for the raising of healthy brood. This means you may need to use another option like Hoppguard in July, practice dron comb removal, etc. to knock back the mite population enough to get by till you knock em dead with oa come winter.

Logged

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory

Bee-nuts... Hopguard, as I understand, is not available in all states... don't think it's an option for me in S. Carolina... I have read about it and it sounds very promising... I would certainly try it if I could. Maybe for now I"ll just go with Apilife Var... temps are right and I should have enough time before the first frost here...